SOURCE: "The Sentimentality of The Vicar of Wakefield" in Modern Critical Views: Oliver Goldsmith, edited by Harold Bloom, Chelsea House, 1987, pp. 15-19.

In the essay below, first published in 1974 and reprinted in 1987, Brissenden considers the role of sentimentality in The Vicar of Wakefield.

The Reverend Dr. Primrose, Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, is, like Parson Adams and Parson Yorick, a Christian hero. He "unites in himself," says the author in the advertisement to his tale, "the three greatest characters upon earth; he is a priest, an husbandman, and the father of a family." He is moreover the embodiment of some of the principal sentimental virtues. He is charitable, humane, optimistic and in general readier to think well rather than ill of his fellow men. All his family, he tells us, "had but one character, that of being all equally generous, credulous, simple, and inoffensive." Since his moral assessments of...